Make Mine A Neat Scotch

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’ve been banging on at some length recently about DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which is a collection of essays, interviews and short stories about Irish crime writing by the Irish crime writers themselves, with yours truly as editor. Happily, great and / or deranged minds think alike, for lo! News comes from Scotland of a tome called DEAD SHARP, edited by Len Wanner and published by Two Ravens Press. To wit:

So much more than just a collection of in-depth interviews with Scotland’s bestselling crime writers, DEAD SHARP is also a distinctive and edgy investigation of Scotland as a changing nation. Brimming with pithy, witty and sometimes just plain weird revelations, these interviews provide a unique and unforgettable insight into how writers think, and into the professional secrets of some of the genre’s greatest exponents. Includes interviews with:

Ian Rankin
Stuart MacBride
Allan Guthrie
Karen Campbell
Neil Forsyth
Christopher Brookmyre
Paul Johnston
Alice Thompson
Louise Welsh

“Len Wanner is the perfect interrogator, subtle, accommodating and incisive, and these interviews elicit many layers of deep, dark and vital intelligence.” – John Banville, author of The Sea

“This is fascinating reading and a real treat. A rare insight into the minds of a diverse group of crime writers, writing in one genre, living in proximity, but all with utterly different, individual voices.” – Peter James, author of Dead Like You

“These interviews cut to the very marrow of Scottish crime writing, deep, incisive and bloody. Bloody good fun too.” – Colin Bateman, author of Mystery Man

“Time was, the best and brightest author interviews were contained in three books: John Williams’ Badlands, and Craig McDonald’s Art in the Blood and Rogue Males. But blasting into the Zeitgeist is Len Wanner’s amazing, in-depth, funny and compassionate collection, showing a side of these authors previously unseen. A stunning, dark jewel in the library of great interviews.” – Ken Bruen, author of London Boulevard and Blitz

“Incorporating a comprehensive range of Scottish author interviews, all of them possessing a different slant on the business of professional writing, Wanner has compiled a must-read anthology of the witty, the wise, the weird and the wonderful. Wanner has encouraged his interviewees to illuminate, edify, entertain and amuse us, and yet has also persuaded them to give us something of real worth. Not only for the aspirant, but also for the weatherworn professional, there is a refreshing vitality and energy present in the text, as if we were right there listening, as if this was for our ears only. Highly recommended, not only as a fascinating peek behind the Oz curtain, but also as a journal of achievement from some of our brightest and best.” – R.J. Ellory, author of A Quiet Belief in Angels

A graduate of University College Dublin, Len Wanner holds an honours degree in German and English, an MA in Modern English, and is currently completing a PhD on Scottish Crime Fiction at the University of Edinburgh. As founder and editor of the online journal thecrimeofitall.com, he has conducted over 450 interviews with international crime writers. He has also been a juror for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and a freelance translator for Irish author Ken Bruen.

  Sounds like a cracker. The book is scheduled for release in August, by the way, so form an orderly queue now …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Conor Fitzgerald

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
DAS FRÄULEIN VON SCUDERI, or MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It is not the best detective work ever written, but it is the first. It would be nice to be the inventor of the genre.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
As a child, I adored the Just William books, all of which I read in Cabinteely library. William lived in a closed, safe and comfortable English country garden world that I wanted to step into. Of course, I now feel that would be a twee and hellish place to spend my adult life. So, if I am really allowed to be any fictional persona from any book, and be accorded his or her concomitant strengths and defects, I suppose I’d go for the character known as ‘God’ in the Old Testament.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Popular science books. I find everything a read in them utterly fascinating, though I am too stupid to retain any of the information they impart. But even though I learn nothing from them whatsoever, I always feel enormously reassured and comforted to be reminded of the presence of those highly intelligent people thinking about complex and intricate matters that are quite beyond me. Good science writers are like antibodies to the viral ignorance of politicians, sociologists, psychologists, economists and literary theorists. The pleasure is a guilty one, because these books form no part of the long and often boring reading list I need to get through for research purposes.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing ‘Chapter 1’. I tend to be feel a bit disappointed with most of what follows.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
What I consider the best piece of music, art, literature, TV or food changes from hour to hour. That said, I have enormous respect for THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE by John Banville, which surely counts as a crime novel. I think it marked the beginning of a new type of modern, urban and sophisticated movement in Irish literature, which is continuing to develop today.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Cormac Millar’s THE GROUNDS has all the right ingredients. I find that many good movies, including HBO TV series, force characters to operate in constructed and constricted spaces, which Millar does in his book. That said, I find there is much to the truism that bad books make great moves and great books make bad movies, so perhaps there is some lousy Irish crime novel out there that I will never read but is destined to become a classic movie.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The luxury of working from home is offset by having to live at your place of work. It’s like spending your whole life with that guilty Sunday-night-and-I haven’t-even- started-my homework-and-here-I am-watching-TV feeling from school. That, and abject penury.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Commissioner Blume investigates the death of an Irish forger whose false masters hang in major galleries worldwide. Based on a true story.

Who are you reading right now?
Camen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff: THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: EIGHT CENTURIES OF FINANCIAL FOLLY.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. When I read, I rewrite in my head, or imagine writing responses, or I plot out where I think the book is going. So reading encompasses writing. Also, we read for the comfort of knowing we are not alone, but we write for fear that we are. As for God appearing, cf. question 2.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Place, character, mortality.

Conor Fitzgerald’s THE DOGS OF ROME is published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Creature From The Black Lagoon

John Banville (right) recently unburdened himself to The Age’s Tom Adair, ruminating about the phenomenon that is Benny Blanco, aka Benjamin Black. Sample outtakes runneth thusly:

“Now, looking back I think the invention of Benjamin Black was John Banville’s ploy to find his way out of what was suspiciously like a rut. I took the pseudonym to indicate that the venture was not an elaborate, post-modernist, literary joke. It is straightforward. I simply discovered I had this facility for cheap fiction.”

“Yes, in a curious way, it’s something I can’t explain, I feel more estranged from the work of John Banville than from the novels of Benjamin Black. I’ve a certain pride in the Benjamin Black books. Those by Banville I hate and loathe and they embarrass me. They stand there, like a set of awful, unforgiven sins.”

So who sells better? “I couldn't tell you,” he says. “I don’t ask. It’s like asking your bank manager about your bank balance. It’s always a shock — or a disappointment.” Then he relents: “Black, in paperback I’d reckon, outsells Banville. But then, THE SEA — because of the Booker win — sold superbly. My great ambition,” he adds, “is for Black to win the Booker and later on to pick up the Nobel.”

Said with tongue, no doubt, very firmly wedged in cheek. The vid below is taken from the end of the excellent documentary screened on RTE recently, Being John Banville, which was directed by Charlie McCarthy for Ice Box Films, in which Benny may or may not have inadvertently hit the why-writers-write nail squarely on the head …

Being Benny Blanco

Ice Box Films turned in an excellent documentary on RTE during the week, the subject being Benny Blanco from the Bronx, aka Benjamin Black, aka John Banville. Produced by Clíona Ní Bhuachalla and directed by Charlie McCarthy, ‘Being John Banville’ was one of those rare pleasures, unafraid to present one man talking about writing unadorned by gimcrack editing or flash-whizz-bang pyrotechnics to jazz things up. The vid has Banville rubbishing the first draft of THE SILVER SWAN, dissing Benny B and explaining his metamorphosis into a potentially soul-destroying popular genre writer, complete with – oh yes! – that all-important Mephistophelian reference. If you’re good, we’ll bring you some more next week …